Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?
Ronald Bailey | March 19, 2007, 10:09am
Albert Mohler, the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, asked these headline questions in his blog last week and sparked something of a media storm. Rev. Mohler was speculating that one day it might be possible to identify in the womb fetuses that have a higher chance of having a homosexual orientation. He further suggested that if such factors could be identified, perhaps it might be possible to treat such fetuses before they are born in way that nudges their orientation back toward heterosexuality. Should parents take advantage of such treatments?
Not surprisingly, some gay activists likened him to Nazi monster Josef Mengele for seeming to advocate the manipulation of nature to "basically wipe out gay people." Let's be clear, Rev. Mohler is a staunch opponent of abortion; he is pondering the possibility of some kind of biomedical intervention that reduces the chances that a fetus might turn out gay.
In absolutely no way do I endorse his theology nor his notion that homosexual sex is sinful (whatever that means), but Rev. Mohler's questions are reasonable ones to contemplate. It may turn out that there is no way to identify sexual orientation in the womb thus making his questions moot. But what if it is possible? Should the government restrict the reproductive choices of parents in order to make sure that a certain percentage of people are "born" gay? Evolutionary psychology suggests that parents (that is people who, by definition, want to reproduce) will prefer to give birth to children who are more likely to give them grandchildren.
In the alternative, it is possible in a world grown more accepting of gay sexuality that it will also be more welcoming of gay parenthood. If the differential in grandchild production between straight and gay offspring narrows, parents will be less likely to worry about the sexual orientation of their children.
In any case, Mohler is right to ask these questions.
Disclosure: Oops. Also forgot. My wife and I are members of Equality Virginia and donated several hundred dollars to its recent campaign against Virginia's idiotic state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
D.A. Ridgely | March 19, 2007, 1:24pm | #
Mr. Bailey:
Aside from being shocked (
shocked!) that you believe in intentionality at all, I would say my own pre-reflective moral sentiments here would be to oppose prohibiting the parents from using their own sperm and eggs but probably in favor of requiring that those sperm and eggs be repaired. (I assume here that the latter case involves no financial hardship to the parents, etc., etc. just to simplify matters.) Do I have a sound argument and bright-line rule available to account for those judgments? Nope. Do I really
need one? I think not, though I freely admit that reasonable people could in good faith arrive at different moral judgments in both cases.
Of course it's intentional all the way down, subject only to whatever the current state of the art permits, but it's not only about whose intentions count or when but what those intentions are. I intend, on the one hand, to pat you on the back for your brilliant journalism; unbeknown to me you are swallowing a peanut at that very moment and thus choke to death. Conversely, I intentionally choke you. Both, obviously, are intentional acts, but they are hardly morally equivalent, are they? (More about which see my reply to Grotius immediately below.)
Grotius:
Oh
puleeze! Does repeatedly raping one's four year old son or daughter
not clearly constitute child abuse to you? Is that really the sort of case in which one
needs to rely on some sort of authority to reach a moral judgment? Sheesh! Look, it is precisely in such matters where, for example, the lives and wellbeing of other people (especially, I would argue, including children) are threatened that we no longer give a damn about consent. We don't say to the would-be murderer, rapist, etc. "Oh, well, I suppose we can't very well try to stop you before or, failing that, punish you afterwards because you don't consent to our doing so."
Sigh. | March 19, 2007, 1:29pm | #
"Are we really piling on people now for having the gall to change their mind in the face of scientific evidence?"
Problem is, they're not doing that. They are ignoring a fundamental part of their previous argument in order to capitalize on the scientific opportunity to edit homosexuality out of humankind.
My original comment seems to have attracted a reaction something like this: "Whether or not homosexuality is a matter of choice doesn't effect its morality." True, we face temptations everyday that we don't choose to be tempted by, but succumbing to those temptations would constitute sin (perhaps this is a reformulation of the "problem of evil" argument against God? What benevolent, all-powerful God would give us temptations that could end up sending us to Hell?).
I readily acknowledge that Christian doctrine doesn't require one to believe that all sins must be freely chosen. If that were the case, the concept of "original sin" wouldn't be a part of the Christian canon. But it is.
My response was contained in the original post I made:
"If the Christian were to claim, then, that the 'sin' is in not being able to control one's natural urges, one might respond that they should also look for 'genetic' treatments to engineer away all manner of other frailties, like stupidity, masochism, and the aforementioned raging libido."
There's no outcry from Mohler demanding wholesale genetic engineering to "edit out" these things, is there? If we could edit them out, and Mohler believes that we SHOULD edit out homosexuality, why should we not edit out all the other predispositions we could have to do "bad things." Maybe, just maybe, Christians would oppose such things because they believe that God made us the way he made us FOR A REASON, and we should think twice before tampering with God's natural design (though this does raise the question of whether or not it is in God's plan for us to learn how to edit genes, and thus be able to exert a "purifying" effect on our children).
Fatmouse | March 19, 2007, 3:15pm | #
(Note: lifelong agnostic here)
Everyone is getting so worked up about OMG HATEFUL XIANS HATE THE GAY that they're ignoring Bailey's original question: can a woman choose if her kid is gay, and what would be the result?
Two thoughts about the results, assuming you can choose it with good reliability:
1. The majority of people want a normal kid. Yes, I said
normal, fuck you. Gay men make up something like ~3% of the male population, lesbians even a smaller percentage of women. Though some weirdoes like Moby may deliberately want their kid gay, most will want one that doesn't stick out in any
potentially negative way. As such, as the generations pass there will be a smaller and smaller proportion of the population born gay, making them even more of a minority.
2. Most parents, if they aren't complete bastards, want their kids to grow up and find somebody to love. Assuming you're a heterosexual man, there's potentially ~50% of the world out there for you to find a mate in, removing those too old, young, ugly, etc. If you're a gay man, however, your potential matches are limited to just ~3% of the world, excluding the old, young, ugly, etc.
So as more and more parents choose to make their kids straight for the first reason, the number of adult homosexuals will decrease, making it harder and harder for them to find a potential mate. This will inspire a vicious circle as parents make their children straight so they can find a lover, reducing the number of homosexuals...
GILMORE | March 19, 2007, 3:47pm | #
So as more and more parents choose to make their kids straight for the first reason, the number of adult homosexuals will decrease...
... in theory.
It sounds great, but again, your assumption is that the connection between a simple genetic predisposition, and actual emergence of 'gayness' or whatever trait the gene might have an association with is actually a fairly simple 1-1 thing that isnt driven by external factors or other uncontrolled elements.
re: my point above of being predisposed to schizophrenia, but not being nearly crazy at all. As far as I can tell. DOnt look at me like that!! (har)
..whereas, is it AT ALL possible that someone who has all the right Manly Girlfucker genes, might watch Spartacus for like the 10th time, and realize, "hey...I like Oysters AND snails too!"
i.e. actually go gay because they WANT to?
I made this complaint earlier when ron posts about "gene for Republicanism discovered"...etc. The science is not so simple that our lives are so entirely preprogrammed, and its just a matter of tweaking the circuit board in the womb. Yes, the stuff is significant...but HOW significant? Significant enough to be the determining factor? Not known. And very possibly unlikely.
a more complex thing like, "intelligence" would be interesting to examine...for instance, if we could give ourselves the "Genius" gene, would we? and would it make us any smarter, sans will to learn, or mental discipline? or would we end up ranting homeless people? I think these narrow assumptions about being able to tinker with sexual orientation are way, way, way off (50yrs as dude says above)...and making any arguments about actual effectiveness or trends in how it would play out are essentially just theory.
gattsuru | March 19, 2007, 3:58pm | #
Male homosexuality has been positively and by a huge factor linked to a larger than average INAH-3 portion of the human brain. That attribute alone should provide a methodology to test DNA.
Of course, you'd likely wipe out a good number of people who would end up being asexual or bisexual in practice.
People
will destroy anything that a doctor tells them is broken. A few rare individuals will avoid such acts, but it takes quite an impressive act of will and/or religiosity to resist the urge to save a 'potential being' from a life of alcoholism, substance abuse, depression, suicide, HIV (70% of male HIV positive results occur in men who have sex with men, opposed the data suggesting less than 10% or 5% of the male population does), and many other STDs.
Think I'm exaggerating? Look at the cases of "mongolian stupidity", or the more common name of Down Syndrome. Despite most of those with the condition able to develop normally with only moderate therapy, parents are confronted with images of institutionalized children whom never underwent even normal schooling or parenting. Those who test positive for Down Syndrome are aborted at what it believed to be a 90% rate or higher.
The same fate is likely to hit the Autism and Asperger syndrome will likely find the same fate : it's estimated a genetic test will be available in less than 10 years. With parents
actively murdering 1 or 2 year old autistic children, we've no reason to assume things will be that different. No matter that Einstein and Newton may have had less significant cases of Asperger's. We'll eliminate them, too.
I find it hard to believe any typical libertarian tendencies would allow people to murder others just because they seem 'different'. I find it strange that libertarians somehow make a difference merely because it risks offending the mother.
